POEM: "Civics"

Civics


I read of conscientiousness
& how it increases the life-span
When this afternoon I see a man
On a bike porting a long sharp pole

But there is no flag of red alert
So maybe now it's the accident
Waiting to happen to that small girl
Who steps off the curb in such a hurry

Grandmother moves too slow
The pole pierces her precious eye
And enters her brain for a moment
And shuts down her primary function

So sudden the need for a civil society
Last seen haggling over the money
One experience of liability bleeding
One man looking for the first chance to run.


© 2004/2011 Rob Schackne

An Ivor Gurney Poem

To His Love


He’s gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We’ll walk no more on Cotswolds
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.

His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn River
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.

You would not know him now…
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.

Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers—
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.

(1917)

POEM: "Zirkusmusik/Angel Fragments"

The 5 Zirkusmusik/Angel Fragments poems that follow are about Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, set in West Berlin before the Wall came down, where a group of invisible angels observe human activity. The angel Damiel falls in love with Marion, a circus artist — and decides to become mortal. The actor Peter Falk, another angel who years ago elected to live as a human, plays himself getting ready for his role in a film about Nazi Berlin. He senses Damiel's presence and offers him some advice. Peter Handke wrote much of the dialogue.

POEM: "Marion"

Marion

                           Lovers, if they knew how, might utter
                           strange things in night air. Since it seems
                           eveything hides us.

                           R.M. Rilke, Second Duino Elegy (Tr. Kline)


When she was a child she made faces
Whenever they took photographs

Already knowing that she was
At grave odds with the world

Hearing the loud machinery
Outside the levelling of the choir

At 12 years old reading Nietzsche
Tossing that aside for Rilke at 14

Then the Japanese Zen cases later
Other mystics social astrophysics

Not waiting around the silent library
For knowledge at the end of the world

Accidents come after painting & music
Poetry and the men came after that

I place my hand on her shoulder
She spits and shivers like a cat.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Marion & Damiel"

Marion & Damiel


Circus dreams. Is this the end?
Clumsy performance that eventually
Changed to pleasure, now slipping off
I'm going down, suddenly forgetting how
These fake wings could ever fly with art and love

How I watch her beautiful on the trapeze
Arguing with all the gravities of need
Less effort, Marion! More swing!
Today the circus Berlin is pulling down the tent
And elephants are doing tricks for themselves

O Angels of solitude and tears
Why do you all look like criminals?
How do you spend the eternal days?
Would you have me sing my song
At night alone in my little van?

There is no answer, why be desperate?
This shall go on for a very long time
Singing the epic of peace, dreaming
Like the old man, breathless, he looks
For the past and remembers Nazi flags

You're the angel. They almost lived happily
Ever after. Sensing the breezy motions
The dozens everywhere, tremor or itch
I can't even tell if you're beside me now
Hiding, utter me anything real tonight.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Peter Falk"

Peter Falk

                             "These people are extras...extra humans."

I.

A single tree grows out of a lake
Primordial, surrounded by fog and
Quiet water. Water as cold as it gets

Winter in Berlin. Bombs were dropped
An old man walks through a wasteland
His Potsdamer Platz still can't be found

A pre-war car is taken out for a drive
Every street has its own hard borderline
A schoolgirl waits for a john in the cold


II.

The clowns don't speak, doubles and ghosts
The clowns try on hats, ghosts and doubles
Lies, if you didn't have it, you would miss it

Charivari. A trained goat is walking a barrel
It's their last performance, free for the kids
They race into the ring to get their balloons

This one is for those who wished they were alive
This one is for all the evil places in the world
This one is for the poets. 

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Who Would Rather Not Think Anymore"

Who Would Rather Not Think Anymore


Sit in the van getting ready
The last night will be your best
A little bit afraid of the full moon
Thinking where were our angels
When the bombs were falling?

Before the story of war
It was going quite well
The days of ecstatic dance
Learning to live with animals
Before it was all paved over

Is the antiphon dirge or beatus
That plays when life is risky?
There will be a party afterwards
But first the audience applauds
The woman who fights the air

Furry ropes and tired props
And cigarette butts joining
White feathers on the water
All of it invents the story
You will keep on having

Glory is all drunken singing
There is a sorrow in angels
No doorways or corners
The set of war is suicide
Why are you crying?

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "So Many Good Things"

So Many Good Things

                                                Als das Kind Kind war...
                                                Peter Handke

I.

It is very late. A Turkish woman
Is vacuuming the empty library

Then she'll go to an all-night laundromat
And watch hope go through its cycles

When the child was a child
She lived in Room 29 next to mine
She could imagine anything


II.

Wake up with the holy armor
When it is thrown down at you
Later that day you'll pawn it for $50

Your head is still bleeding a little
But there are so many good things left

A stranger gives you your first money
To buy your very first cup of coffee

And you'll burn your mouth
Wondering about the first snow

You give a stranger exquisite directions
And wait for first bliss in a circle of sand

Compañero, compañero, they whisper 
Other wings will grow that will be valid

You will find her. You will find a home.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect"

It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect

At 5 o’clock listening for the birds
They wake up and start their calling
(As if nobody again will listen)

Drive in to work, play Keith Jarrett
And there’s no one there to disagree
Driving home, AC/DC’s Highway To Hell

On Sunday you don’t go to church, instead
You go to the pharmacy “Family Planning” section
& stare too long at the inverted commas

The music in there is horrible
All mixed up with improbable fears
(You probably still love your wife a little)

A parking lot in the afternoon—
But no she says, it’s more like sunset
She throws her leg over you and sighs.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Philip Larkin Poem

 

High Windows


When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.


(1974)

A Tomas Tranströmer Poem

 Alone

   
I.

One evening in February I came near to dying here.
The car skidded sideways on the ice, out
on the wrong side of the road. The approaching cars –
their lights – closed in.

My name, my girls, my job
broke free and were left silently behind
further and further away. I was anonymous
like a boy in a playground surrounded by enemies.

The approaching traffic had huge lights.
They shone on me while I pulled at the wheel
in a transparent terror that floated like egg white.
The seconds grew – there was space in them –
they grew as big as hospital buildings.

You could almost pause
and breathe out for a while
before being crushed.

Then something caught: a helping grain of sand
or a wonderful gust of wind. The car broke free
and scuttled smartly right over the road.
A post shot up and cracked – a sharp clang – it
flew away in the darkness.

Then – stillness. I sat back in my seat-belt
and saw someone coming through the whirling snow
to see what had become of me.

    

II.

I have been walking for a long time
on the frozen Östergötland fields.
I have not seen a single person.

In other parts of the world
there are people who are born, live and die
in a perpetual crowd.

To be always visible – to live
in a swarm of eyes –
a special expression must develop.
Face coated with clay.

The murmuring rises and falls
while they divide up among themselves
the sky, the shadows, the sand grains.

I must be alone
ten minutes in the morning
and ten minutes in the evening.
– Without a programme.

Everyone is queuing at everyone's door.

Many.

One.

(2011) Tr. Robin Fulton

A Norman Dubie Poem

 The Novel as Manuscript
                         — an ars poetica


I remember the death, in Russia,
of postage stamps 
like immense museum masterpieces
patchwork
wrapped in linen, tea stained,
with hemp for strapping...
these colored stamps designed for foreign places
were even printed during famine—
so when they vanished, so did the whole
Soviet system:
the Berlin Wall, tanks from Afghanistan
and Ceausescu's bride before a firing squad.

It had begun with the character of Yuri Zhivago
in a frozen wilderness, the summer house
of his dead in-laws, his 
pregnant mistress asleep
before the fireplace
with flames dancing around a broken chair, piano keys
and the gardener's long black underwear.

Lara lying there. A vulgar fat businessman
coming by sleigh to collect her for the dangers
of a near arctic escape...

But for Yuri, not that long ago, he was
with celebrity, 
a young doctor publishing a thin volume
of poems in France, he was writing
now at a cold desk
poems against all experience
and for love of a woman buried
in moth-eaten furs on the floor—

while he wrote
wolves out along the green treeline
howled at him. The author of this novel,
Boris Pasternak arranged it all. Stalin would
have liked to have killed him. But superstition kept him from it.
So, the daughter of Pasternak's mistress eventually 
is walking with a candle
through a prison basement—
she is stepping over acres of twisted corpses
hoping to locate her vanished mother...
she thinks this reminds her of edging slowly
over the crust on a very deep snow, just a child who believes 
she is about to be swallowed by the purity of it all,
like this write your new poems.



(2011)

POEM: "Spirit As Evidence Based On Non-Zero Mass"

Spirit As Evidence Based On Non-Zero Mass

How to press firm against the world

concrete pavement and harder hearts

now at the smallest threads of gravity?

On ground from which we are not free

the strains, the stops, the push, the hold

& every single thing we come across

we ask, could anything not work better?

On this day when prayers are answered

careless men do sometimes fall from Earth

who leap up like fish without grip to dance.

Tonight, generous equinox, it is for them

the inflected half-moon, herself unfolded

when all are invited to a golden exit, then

to be perfect, unbound, graceful and alone.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Waxes"

Waxes

                       for Rosemary Nissen-Wade

Except the brushes sigh
drawing in more detail
their love is a painting

when she waxes the moon
(broom is not a surfboard)
the bushes look different

he walks safe in his sleep

in the garden after midnight
you seldom read about it

when he grows weaker
her poems get stronger
the points of measurement

bag of grain, good souls
at the gravity of love
point of hope (and heaven)

the sun and sweet fields
& at night in the granary
water mixed with wine and tears.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Maurice Riordan Poem

 Stars And Jasmine

Each of them has been a god many times:
cat, hedgehog and – our summer interloper – the tortoise.
A perfect triangle, they can neither eat
nor marry one another.
And tonight they are gods
under the jasmine under the stars.

Already the hedgehog has scoffed the cat’s supper
and she’s walked nonplussed beside him
escaping headlong into the bushes.
Wisely now, she keeps an eye on him there,
and on the tortoise
noisily criss-crossing the gravel.

For the cat, jasmine is white
but the stars have colours.
For the hedgehog, there are no stars
only a sky of jasmine,
against which he sniffs something dark,
outlined like a bird of prey.

Wisely, the tortoise ignores both jasmine and stars.
Isn’t it enough, she says, to carry the sky on your back,
a sky that is solid, mathematical and delicately coloured –
on which someone, too, has painted
our neighbours’ address: 9a Surrey Rd.
Come September, we will post her through their letterbox.


(2011)

A Matthew Rohrer Poem

Garden of Bees 

The narcissus grows past
the towers. Eight gypsy
sisters spread their wings
in the garden. Their gold teeth
are unnerving. Every single
baby is asleep. They want
a little money and I give
them less. I'm charming and
handsome. They take my pen.
I buy the poem from the garden
of bees for one euro. A touch
on the arm. A mystery word.
The sky has two faces.
For reasons unaccountable
my hand trembles.
In Roman times if they were
horrified of bees they kept it secret.

(2011)

POEM: "A Black Hair"

A Black Hair

Lessening rain

forget it was stuck

on the window

if it’s breathing

keep it close

to the glass

burn a candle

swear don’t look

one eye closes a poem

one eye opens a poem

know things always

attach then let go.

© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Gabrielle Calvocoressi Poem

 A Word From The Fat Lady


It isn't how we look up close
so much as in dreams.

Our giant is not so tall,
our lizard boy merely flaunts

crusty skin - not his fault
they keep him in a crate

and bathe him maybe once a week.
When folks scream or clutch their hair

and poke at us and glare and speak
of how we slithered up from Hell,

it is themselves they see:
the preacher with the farmer's girls

(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)
or the mother lurching towards the sink,

a baby quivering in her gnarled
hands. Horror is the company

you keep when shades are drawn.
Evil does not reside in cages.


(2005)

POEM: "Philippe Petit, Twin Towers, NYC, 1974"

Philippe Petit, Twin Towers, NYC, 1974

                                         
                                              (Imaginary fragment: Sept. 11)


damn these towers high off the deck
check the anchorage over and over
winds howl the quick pure moment
only the act of one God could let this go
I recite my prayers and banish hubris
the last time high in the air a small bird
flew on to my wire I stilled it waited there
while I thought no-thing no-thing nothing
till it vanished with a slight vibration


© 2008 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Shark Attack/Lines On A Beach"

Shark Attack/Lines On A Beach


I.

Are the frangipanis forever sweet?
And does the wind still whisper
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Possums clinging to their trees?
Stars come out from their shells
Like bugs crawling across the sand?


II.

Yesterday off Bunker Bay in WA
A brave young surfer was taken by a shark
Swimming today with bad indigestion
Of nylon steamer, bathers and a bracelet
With an ankh, a Hello Kitty & blood-type tag
(An emergency alert for tigers and this poem).


III.

There's a serious case for other murders
(Hear the call for drum-lines off the beaches
To mutilate & deter our brothers-at-sea)
A spot of fun, a feed, a surf, more death?
Rest easy as you can, fortunate friend
To be one at last with what you loved.



© 2011 Rob Schackne